For those following Armadillo, is the recent work on an electronic actuator for the sea-catch a result of the first drop-test abort due to release cable wrapping around the chain? Meaning that while this work supports future drop-tests, the actuator and sea-catch are not devices that will be used on the actual X-Prize vehicle.

Im wondering when are they going to get their high-grade peroxide supply for flying the small vehicle.
It was "in a couple of months" four months ago On space policy digest BBS JC recently said he's actually paying someone to run a distill unit.

Yes, but I heard the quantities are barely enough to do testing, and that the distiller was having troubles.

I think the Carmack team is making use of some other "distilled" products by the looks of their progress in this race. I can't believe that they are being touted as one of the teams that's "getting close". Rutan's team is so far ahead in this contest that noone will catch them IMO. Not without killing someone in the process.

Armadillo appparently scored a major success last weekend, getting their mixed monoprop engine to work perfectly.

Our last run wound up going for 125 seconds at somewhat over 200 pounds thrust. This is Very Good. We have spent months working on the mixed-monoprop scheme, but until now, we were never 100% sure that is was actually going to work out for the X-Prize vehicle. Now that we have unlimited burn times and self-preheating, it looks like we have made the right decision.

I still think Rutan will win, but with Rutan's slipup and this new development, the X-Prize is looking to be more of a competition now...

Indeed, the competition is getting very exciting now. The big vehicle seems to be very close to flight testing. I hope they work out the instability of it before flying it though, the helicopter drop didn't look too good. I must say the Armadillo team has put a respectable amount of effort into their project

In Armadillo's latest update, Carmack briefly mentions the random-labor issue. Now, I've wondered what plans Armadillo has in place in the event of a major systems failure? I would expect (as Carmack has suggested) that Armadillo will lose a vehicle in flight testing...I would suspect from a manufacturing flaw as much as anything else... How soon to field a replacement? Are any specialties on Carmack's team one-deep? At what point should a back-up "big vehicle" begin construction?

Good thing Armadillo posts their figures so precisely. The 125 second burn consumed 76.8 liters of propellant and produced about 200 pounds of thrust, which would equate as about 150 Isp. Not bad considering they had almost half of the catalyst cold. Whatever they get with the entire catalyct pack working, they should have a pretty nifty engine on their hands

I believe they could achieve even more thrust with better atomizing; the thing they have now looks like a shower nozzle. There are special sprinkler snouts that practically turn water into fog; one cubic centimeter (1/16 CID) of water produces one billion microscopic droplets.

Although I think that Rutan is pretty much guaranteed the win at this point, Armadillo is still my favorite. I'm not sure if it was online or at the convention I saw Carmack at but he said their long term goal is to get to orbit. Should be a very interesting journey for them if they go for that. I'm really looking forward to seeing how their upcoming hover tests go with, I guess it could now be considered their medium sized vehicle.